Wu gong zhou

There are at least 3 different films being reviewed here! Some guy is reviewing 'Begotten', a majority of people are reviewing The Most Disturbing Film In The Universe (which I thought I was downloading after scanning a couple of the reviews), and a sanity-restoring few are reviewing the flick I just saw. A nice 80s Hong Kong black magic romp, with some gross out live centipede barfing at the end nicely rounding things off. It may not have been the disturbing nightmare I was anticipating, but this altogether different prospect was highly enjoyable, I thought, if pretty standard fare. Also of note, there is a great bit of moody 80s synthesizer work in here, which sounds awfully familiar to something from El-p's 'Fantastic Damage' album! OK, after some more digging, I think some people are reviewing Takashi Miike's segment of Masters Of Horror, called 'Imprint'. Others are reviewing 'Cutting Moments'. However, there is still one that is eluding me, which appears to be a HK 80s horror: wizards, decapitation, transformation etc. What the hell is this film?

I just don't know why I constantly subject my self to this crap...I haven't seen one of these types of films yet that I even remotely enjoyed, but being that I have the urge to try to absorb anything horror related - I guess I gotta take the good with the bad...

CENTIPEDE HORROR is another 80's HK film that deals with sorcery and vendettas and puking things up - in this case centipedes. A girl goes on vacation to South East Asia. While there, a sorcerer notices her wearing a necklace that belonged to an old comrade of the sorcerer, whose misdeeds caused the decimation of their village. The sorcerer casts a spell which causes centipedes to attack the girl while she's out in the woods trying to take a leak. When she dies, her brother travels to the scene of the incident to look for answers to his sisters death...

I don't know why other reviewers talk about these films as though they are so gory and disturbing. Yes...there are a few scenes of people puking up live centipedes in CENTIPEDE HORROR which can be kind of gross, but other than that (oh yeah...and one decent scorpion puking scene...), there is virtually no violence, gore, or other disturbing material in this film - and this also goes for all the other films in this same genre, such as SEEDING OF A GHOST, DEVIL FETUS, THE DEVIL, etc...They are all typically dull and derivative of each other - all involve some sort of sorcery, some sort of revenge against a previous wrong doing - and all have this revenge being exacted in the form of people puking up some sort of live creature. All very similar - all very dull. I give CENTIPEDE HORROR a 5/10 - only because the story is a little more coherent and is better filmed than some of the other entries - although I believe SEEDING OF A GHOST to be the best of this bad genre of films...leave these alone unless you're like me and HAVE to see everything horror-related, regardless of quality or entertainment value...5/10

Reading the other comments for this film here on IMDb, one might be forgiven for being a bit confused.

Some people claim that this is one of the vilest pieces of filth ever committed to celluloid and only the sick and depraved would be able to (or want to) sit through it in its entirety. This couldn't be further from the truth.

Other comments describe scenes of torture, abortions, real animal killings, castration, decapitation, mutilation, and humiliation. God only knows what film they were watching, but it sure wasn't Keith Li's Centipede Horror.

However, select 'prolific authors' in the comment filter, and you get a much more accurate account of the film (thank you EVOL666 and HumanoidOfFlesh for your always reliable contributions).

Centipede Horror is actually a fairly hum-drum serving of HK supernatural horror that is enlivened occasionally by some silly black magic mumbo-jumbo and a spot of creepy-crawly nastiness for all those afraid of many-legged mini-beasts.

The film begins with a young woman and her friend travelling to SE Asia where they are bitten by poisonous centipedes, which ultimately cause their deaths. The brother of one of the girls decides to investigate his sibling's strange demise, and discovers that his sister was the victim of a spell, placed on her by a magician seeking revenge for a terrible act perpetrated by their long-dead grandfather. And now he's after the brother too! The first 40 minutes of this film is almost coma inducing, and only the most committed of horror fans will make it past this point. Those that do will then be treated to an entertaining 'exorcism' involving a naked woman with a green stomach, two ghost children, and some yucky bugs.

From this point on, things thankfully get more interesting, until the effective finalé which features loads of scuttling critters and a wonderful closing moment which is guaranteed to make you gag: a woman graphically throws up several large centipedes!!!

After having sat through this film, I find the inordinate amount of reviews touting this film as the end all of "disturbing" films rather strange. I did think the reviews had something unrealistic to them, almost theatrical. My only explanation is that someone with a lot of time and/or friends decided to play an elaborate joke on the unsuspecting IMDb reader and filled the commentaries with unrealistic histrionic reviews on how "frightening" the movie is. Yet, again, the reviews are very sparsely distributed in the year 2006. I just don't know what to think. What I can tell you is this: This film is not frightening, it is not disturbing, it isn't even remotely disgusting save for some lame scenes with bugs being puked out. Big deal, really. The majority of the film is just a guy running around from one "wizard" to the next to try and find out what evil wrongdoing his grandfather had done, which is assumed was the cause for the spell that killed his sister.

Seriously, the majority of reviews here must be some kind of joke. There simply is no other explanation. This film is too obscure to have somehow gotten into the hands of the kind of people who would unsuspectingly expect a Disney movie and then get "disturbed" by this of all movies. For cryin' out loud. If you are still not convinced, see ray1979, EVOL666, and ComixComix comments as well for a more realistic picture.

That said, I give the film a four, simply because it is decent for what it is: slightly cheesy, typically melodramatic Hong Kong "horror" fare.

I write this comment almost 12 days after watching this movie and still there is a sense of discomfort about this movie, when I think of the way it ended. Very frankly "Centipede Horror" freaked me out. Seen a lot of Din Long Lee (Hong Kong Police Madame 3) vehicles, but this one, Dang!!!! really put me off. First of all the movie is paced so slowly that it kinds of puts off track and then last 30 minutes just blows you off, with a last few scenes taking the cake. This in no way can be described as a family picture, rather, it is a movie for psychos whose time might be better spent getting their noggins looked at. With decent acting from all of them. I give this one nevertheless a 0/10 just for sheer bad vibes...

Steer clear.